Cohasset Dramatic Club musical has been pet project

Thursday

Jul 19, 2012 at 12:01 AMJul 19, 2012 at 7:20 PM

Director Lisa Pratt knew she would have no trouble finding talented teen and young adult performers from the South Shore for the 20-member company of this weekend’s Cohasset Dramatic Club summer drama workshop production of “Legally Blonde: The Musical.” It was Pratt’s pursuit of the just the right paws while casting the all-important roles of Bruiser, the charming Chihuahua, and Rufus, a larger but no less loveable dog, that gave her pause.

R. Scott Reedy

Director Lisa Pratt knew she would have no trouble finding talented teen and young adult performers from the South Shore for the 20-member company of this weekend’s Cohasset Dramatic Club summer drama workshop production of “Legally Blonde: The Musical.” It was Pratt’s pursuit of the just the right paws while casting the all-important roles of Bruiser, the charming Chihuahua, and Rufus, a larger but no less loveable dog, that gave her pause.

“We had used a local golden retriever when we did ‘Annie’ a few years back. The dog was great, but got distracted at one performance when it sniffed its owner in the front row,” recalled Pratt by telephone during a rehearsal break last week. “When Norwell High School did ‘Annie,’ they brought in a dog trained by Bill Berloni.”

Pratt knew Berloni as the animal trainer famed for providing the rescue dogs used on Broadway in the Tony Award-winning Best Musical of 1977 “Annie,” and its subsequent revivals, as well as “Legally Blonde: The Musical,” the 2007 Laurence O’Keefe and Neil Benjamin musical with book by Heather Hatch about a sorority girl who enrolls at Harvard to win back her ex-boyfriend, and many other pet-friendly productions.

“I met Bill at Norwell High School in 2007 and he could not have been nicer. He was so approachable then that when we decided to do ‘Legally Blonde’ this year, I gave him a call to see if he could help us with our dogs.”

The Connecticut-based Berloni – winner of a special Tony Award in 2011 – recommended two dogs for the roles and assigned Karen Wells, a handler with his William Berloni Theatrical Animal Agency, to be with them in Cohasset.

“We’re using Roxie, a blonde Chihuahua rescued in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, for the role of Bruiser, and a white-haired, blue-eyed basset hound named Paul Newman will play Rufus,” said Wells by telephone last week from Cohasset. “Paul Newman is actually my dog who was rescued from an abandoned garage in New Jersey. Being a purebred basset with white fur and blue eyes makes him a real anomaly.”

Rufus is most often played by an English bulldog, so Newman’s Cohasset casting is also a bit of an anomaly, although it is not his first professional job.

“Paul Newman made his stage debut this spring in ‘Legally Blonde’ at the Westchester Broadway Theatre in Elmsford, N.Y., and he proved popular with audiences. He worked with Roxie in that production and they got along very well. They are both very social dogs and enjoy each other’s company.”

Roxie, an understudy in the “Legally Blonde” national tour that played the Boston Opera House in October 2008, and show business newcomer Newman were trained in the Berloni method which teaches an animal how to ignore the distraction of the audience and respond to the same cues night after night, just like his or her human co-stars.

“Three special rehearsals were held, because the dogs can only relate to the actors with whom they work most closely,” according to Wells, who donates half her salary to Mid-Atlantic Basset Hound Rescue in Washington, N.J. “These dogs have been well-trained to do these jobs. It doesn’t happen overnight. They are temperament tested to make sure they will be able to work with all kinds of different actors and that they are friendly and get along well with people. I’m in the wings at every performance keeping an eye on them at all times. You have to be so careful that the actors know how to keep the dogs safe.”

Working alongside and watching out for Roxie in Cohasset will be Miranda Rich of Hanover, who is starring as Harvard Law student Elle Woods, and Norwell’s Ale Gianino, who plays her friend, Margot, while Paul Newman will be spending most of his time on stage with Alex Kingston of Scituate and Michael Baldry of Cohasset, who portray Paulette, the lovesick hairdresser, and Kyle, the delivery man who sets her temperature rising, respectively.

“Miranda, Ale, Alex, and Michael have the most interaction with the dogs and Karen has worked very closely with them on commands,” according to Pratt. “Our other young actors really love the dogs, too, and have come to watch them rehearse.”

Fraternizing between cast members is being kept to a minimum, however, until Sunday’s final curtain.

“We don’t want the dogs to get distracted during the run of the show, so we save all the hugging and petting for after the final performance,” says Wells.

The Cohasset Dramatic Club will present “Legally Blonde: The Musical” at Cohasset Town Hall Theater, 41 Highland Avenue, Cohasset, through Sunday, July 22. For tickets and information, call 617-922-0280 or go online at cohassetdramaticclub.org.